A balance between supply and demand must be determined to meet the parking requirements of motorists. The ability to efficiently allocate and manage on-street parking remains elusive, even when parking requirements are significant, recurring, and known ahead of time. For instance, urban parking spaces characteristically undergo periods of widely skewed demand and utilization, with low demand and light use in some periods, often during the night, and heavy demand and use at other times. Real-time parking occupancy detection systems are an emerging technology in parking management.
Some prior art parking occupancy detection approaches utilize a puck-style/ultrasonic sensor configuration that outputs a binary signal when detecting a vehicle in, for example, a parking stall or a particular parking space. FIGS. 1-2, for example, illustrate respective parking occupancy detection systems 100 and 150 for parking occupancy detection in an on-street parking and parking lot. In the example depicted in FIG. 1, system 100 includes one or more puck-style in-/above-ground sensors 102, 104, 106. Also depicted in FIG. 1 are example parking spaces 108, 110, 112, 114. A vehicle 116 is shown parked in parking space 110 in FIG. 1. It can be assumed that the sensor 104 located closest to the parking space 110 can be employed in the detection of vehicle 116 located in parking space 110.
System 150 shown in FIG. 2, on the other hand, can include an image capturing unit 190 deployed on-site to monitor the parking spaces 160, 162, and 164. The captured video is processed real-time to report available parking space to drivers. In the example shown in FIGS. 1-2, the various sensors 102, 104, 106 and the image capturing unit 190 can provide real-time data in order to aid drivers searching for the parking spaces and to reduce traffic congestion in cities due to drivers circling about parking lots in a wasteful and time consuming effort to find parking spaces. Such prior art parking space management and reservation systems are based on the use of sensor input data for determining parking space availability and is costly.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved parking occupancy detection system and method utilizing laser scanning, as will be described in greater detail herein.